Revisiting cider cake

Thinking about baking, and i remembered a post I wrote a coupe of years ago:

For various reasons we have ended up with a gallon of cider… which would be great if any of us drank cider. I really wish I liked it – especially as Somerset is now our county, where we live, and a fine place too. Somerset is renowned for many things, including cheese and cider – so as it is a local product I would love to enjoy it… but I just don’t. I don’t like the taste and I particularly don’t like the smell. I wish I did!

So, not to waste it I’ve been using it in cooking; I made a chicken in cider casserole with cooking apples, onions and celery and lots of herbs, in the oven at this very minute is a bacon joint slow-cooking in cider with dessert apples, red onion, sweet pepper, pomegranate molasses and lots of ground pepper, and I have another recipe in mind for a Somerset beef casserole with butter beans and tomatoes as well as the beef and cider (and a few other things)

My next thing to make is a cider cake – and from a collection of Somerset recipes, here’s the one I am going to use:

Somerset cider cake

• 4 oz Somerset butter
• 4 oz sugar
•  2 eggs
•  8 oz flour, sifted with ½ tsp each of bicarbonate of soda. ginger, and nutmeg
• 5 fl oz good Somerset cider whisked until it is really frothy

1. cream butter and sugar until it is really lightly and creamy and pale in colour
2. gently fold in half the flour and spice mix
3. stir in the cider,very gently
4.  fold in the rest of the flour
5. pour into a greased and line 7″ cake tin and put into a preheated oven, 300ºF, 150ºC, gas mark 2 for 45 mins
6. keep for a day before you cut it, eat it, enjoy it!

PS I have to confess that the gallon of cider we have is Devon cider… not Somerset…